Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many people were identified as suitable for appointment in the recruitment process for the board of the Office for Students but were not appointed.

Two parallel open recruitment campaigns were held in the second half of 2017; one for Office for Students (OfS) board members, and a second specifically for a student experience board member. The campaigns generated 221 applications for the non-executive board member positions and 133 applications for the Student Experience representative. Please note that some applicants responded to both campaigns.

11 candidates were shortlisted for interview for the non-executive board member positions. Ten interviews were held as one candidate did not attend the interview.six candidates were shortlisted and interviewed for the student experience board member position.

Ten candidates were deemed appointable for the non-executive board member positions. Three candidates were deemed appointable for the student experience board member position. Ministers chose to appoint five candidates from the ten non-executive campaign and therefore five candidates were not appointed. For the student experience campaign, ministers chose not to appoint any of the three appointable candidates. Ministers then chose to make an interim appointment of one of the successful candidates appointed to the OfS Student Panel onto the OfS Board and will re-run a campaign for a permanent student representative on the OfS Board later in the year.